developing a badminton discord bot

Back in ninth grade, I created 9aclass.net/zoom-details (has depreciated), a page for my class’ website which automatically serves the meeting code, password, and link based on the class schedule, for my fellow classmates during HBL (Home-based learning). Not stopping there, I also created “9A’s Pet” which is a Discord bot for the 9A discord server that does the same thing like the automatic zoom details and provides class schedules. At the core of all these creations, it was coded through Javascript language. For most people, already having the knowledge of HTML, CSS, and Javascript to make a website page is already enough, however I wanted to dive deeper into the world of programming. That was when I found out that the recommended programming language is Python due to its simplicity, popularity, and power.

Product Goal

During my first two weeks in grade 10, the Tokyo Olympics 2020 was held which is a must-see tournament for badminton fans considering elite badminton tournaments have been continuously cancelled for the past 3-4 months due to COVID-19. With it being held, it reminded me how difficult it is to access badminton information on the web without using badminton social media accounts. Part of the badminton viewing experience is looking at player’s head-to-head, rank, or current available tournaments. After learning Python, I hope to apply the knowledge to enhance the badminton viewing experience. To achieve this, I need to decide the platform or way users can access my program which is a Discord bot. This decision was made from my past experience making “9A’s Pet” Discord bot using Javascript and after looking at countless creative bots that have been made for Discord. I have already decided that I will implement 3 main features in my Badminton Discord Bot which is head-to-head infos (singles and doubles), world rankings for all 5 disciplines, and BWF tournament calendar information that showcases the available tournaments.

Reflection

Impact of the project on myself

To me, this project is about making a love letter to my favorite sport, badminton. So even when the Personal Project has ended, I will still cherish and use the product. I also took this project because I am still in a phase of exploring the potential careers I would like to pursue. I really find myself enjoying the process of programming my product even if sometimes it pushes my brain to its limit. Making the “Head-to-head doubles” feature was the most difficult part of the process, at that point, I was doubting myself if I could actually finish the bot. It felt like nothing was working because I have written every single thing I could think of. When I finally found the solution after taking a break, the euphoric feeling is irreplaceable especially knowing that I basically have made a feature no other Discord bot has (although it may be because a popular Badminton Discord Bot does not exist). But at the same time, I have found that programming as a career is not suitable for me. Especially if I take a Computer Science major, I really cannot imagine how difficult learning theoretical concepts will be. Because all this time I learn to make my product but on the other hand, you’ll be learning to fully understand about computers. So while I have dimmed the ‘computer science” path, I hope I get to find a path where I can have unleash the same spark and creativity just like programming

Impact of the project on my learning

The great thing about Personal Project is having the freedom in your approach on doing the project. And this project certainly proved myself the best method on how I learn or work. While it is obvious that to finish a task, you must have commitment, looking back at myself, I always have commitment when I have the need/want for it. So it is not difficult for me to finish the tasks and while I already know this since back then, I am still surprised at how I can be so laser-focused on the things I do when I have an interest in it. An example of this is, I could be coding my project for hours straight until my eyes feel sore because I just want to see results happen. However this is something that can be dangerous in the future so certainly something to take note of.

Another thing that I managed to discover is, I initially thought I would just do the project by learning the basics and move on to programming the Discord Bot. But as it turns out, naturally, I felt more comfortable starting making the bot while learning Python. I think this is much more efficient because not only can you quickly make the bot, you save a lot of time since you do not have to watch all of the video tutorials. This leads to another revelation I noticed, I did not really learn from Youtube tutorials however mostly from Stackoverflow (Quora for programmers) and documentations. In short, I find myself being more productive when I can get immediately hands-on doing the project which means straightforward resources and strong commitment.

Product Evaluation

I personally am satisfied with the final result of my product, especially being able to see the features I have always thought of creating gives me a lot of satisfaction. To me, I find it quite successful although there are minor shortcomings on the head-to-head doubles command. The lacking aspect pointed out by the respondents for the head-to-head doubles command is its confusing instructions provided in the help command. Naturally, there are two ways to solve this problem, either I improve the code of head-to-head doubles command or I improve the instructions for the command in “!sf_help”, the command for help. Further discussion for improving the head-to-head doubles command will be in the next paragraph. Another thing I would like to improve for “!sf_s” and “!sf_d” is simplifying it to one command, perhaps a command, “!sf_h2h”, so users don’t need to type a command that